Are we skiing or not?

While there is no snow and no prospect of the ski resorts opening at least in the near future would it not be in Andorra's interest to keep the borders closed during this period?

With all the bars restaurants and ski resorts closed in France until January 20 and the borders opening mid December, is Andorra not just encouraging the French to come up and eat in our restaurants and drink in our bars?

There is a meeting today with Catalunya to try and get the borders with Spain open earlier, in this case December 7th. With no skiing likely before 19th December at the very earliest, are we not again going to open the floodgates to the tourists and by extension to the virus?

The number of daily infections in Andorra has fallen but remain stubbornly high, yesterday recording 77 new  infections, well the following day (yesterday) there were 106 new cases !!. When the borders opened in the summer there had been no reported cases for over three weeks. At the same time cases in France and Spain being in their thousands are far far higher than when the borders were opened after the first wave.

In Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong and other countries are now on their third wave, having eliminated the virus in the past two occasions. Andorra is about to open the floodgates again and it is not a guess if infection rates rise, it is how quickly? We can now safely rely on previous figures from the first two waves which would indicate that within 4 to 6 weeks of travel being permitted the figures start to rise.

If we accept mid-December as the time when borders open, then you can expect the third wave to be very noticeable towards late January. Two years ago the first significant snowfall was 23rd of January.

With the third wave inevitable before any potential vaccine arrives or has any effect then the question must be asked as to why open the borders sooner rather than later and pushback that so that skiers can enjoy what is going to be a very short ski season.

Comments are welcome as always!!!